among people who are homeless,
slept outside in a rainstorm, ate at
soup kitchens, and experienced a bit
of what those without homes endure
every day. He found how hard it was,
while living on the streets, to follow
through on his plans to walk to a
certain shelter on time or find a place
to take a shower. “One of the major
lessons I learned … is that the streets
have their own schedule,” he wrote
on his blog, which gave him great
compassion for the homeless guests at
the Gubbio Project.

Pope Francis encourages each of
us to ask ourselves the question that
Pope Leo asked of Katharine Drexel:
“What about you? What are you going to do?” Living out our own call
to mission may be less dramatic than
Lopez’s experience of living with the
homeless for a week. Perhaps it requires us to say something when an

Enter #279 at VocationMatch.com

acquaintance tells a hateful or bigoted joke and everyone else is afraid
to object. Or we could speak up for
the voiceless in our society by contacting our politicians to advocate
for more just treatment of people
in poverty, minorities, immigrants,
refugees, prisoners, the unborn, and
others at the margins of society.

Perhaps we can make a point
of reaching out to a friend who has
lost a loved one or who is suffering
another kind of loss. Often people in
grief are greatly isolated because others hesitate to bring up the loss since
they don’t know what to say. We can
simply ask from the heart, “How
are you really doing?” and give the